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Mini Cooper SE Convertible wheels made entirely from recycled aluminum

Mini has revealed an interesting fact about its limited-run Mini Cooper SE Convertible: It's the first production car with wheels made from 100% recycled aluminum. Despite sharing the same look as wheels available on the regular SE hatch, they're actually much more environmentally friendly. The wheels were developed with Swiss wheel manufacturer Ronal. The company sells aftermarket wheels under the Ronal and Speedline brands, and it supplies OEMs. And it's no stranger to more environmentally-friendly wheel production. It supplies wheels for the Audi E-Tron GT that are made using a smelting process that produces oxygen rather than carbon dioxide, and it now has a line of claimed carbon-neutral aftermarket wheels. But back to the Mini's wheels. Using all recycled aluminum has the obvious benefit of not requiring new aluminum to be manufactured. But the benefits are greater than just the raw material use. Mini points out that a major improvement in carbon emissions comes from being able to skip the electrolysis process for new aluminum manufacturing. Pure aluminum is extracted from aluminum oxide (which is in turn taken from the mineral bauxite). To do this large amounts of electricity are passed through molten solutions of aluminum oxide and cryolite (which takes energy to heat) across graphite cathodes and annodes. Not only does this use a lot of electricity that has its own carbon costs, the oxygen that separates from the aluminum bonds to the graphite annodes, yielding more carbon dioxide (which is why the production of those Audi wheels is also interesting). In total, Mini says the recycled wheel production reduces carbon emissions by 75%. More specifically, it estimates about 0.16 kilograms (0.35 pounds) per kilogram (2.2 pounds) of aluminum used. Mini also stresses that this process still maintains all the strength of conventional wheels, just in a greener way. And of course, the wheels themselves are recyclable again. Mini, and BMW more broadly, are looking at ways to upscale the process and to source suitable recyclable products, likely other old wheels from cars no longer on the road. Though neither company said anything about when we'll see fully recycled wheels more widely available. Related Video: MINI Electric Pacesetter inside and out

Corvette gets slidey with Britain's best performance cars

Autocar wants to find Britain's best driver's car, and it's challenging a murderers' row of some of the world's best performance vehicles to find out, including the latest Chevrolet Corvette Stingray. All of them were therefore assembled at the Castle Combe Circuit to find a winner.
If it wants to take the crown from this pack of mostly European competitors, the 'Vette has to beat some steep competition. Its challengers include monsters like the Ferrari 458 Speciale, Ariel Atom 3.5R and Jaguar F-Type Coupe. As a further hurdle for the winner to clear, Autocar also has last year's champ among the fighters - the Porsche 911 GT3.
Even if you're not at all interested in the C7, there's still something here for practically any fan of fast cars. The competitors include relative oddities among the pack like the Renault Mégane RS Trophy and Alfa Romeo 4C. Plus, Autocar has some well-positioned microphones that let you hear the Atom wailing like a banshee and the roar of the 458 Speciale. Check out the video to see which one of these all-stars takes home the award this year.

What's up with this thought-controlled BMW i3?

Autonomous driving? A car being controlled by just verbal commands? One pilot program is going way beyond that this year with a car that can theoretically be mind-controlled. UK-based insurance-services company MoneySuperMarket is promoting something called "Epic Mind Drive." The project involves a BMW i3 electric vehicle (nice and futuristic) being rigged up with an autonomous driving system. Only instead of the system watching the road, it involves a person sitting in a seat outside of the car with an electroencephalography (EEG) neuro headset connected to the vehicle. In fact, that headset records brain activity and translates it into instructions. Those instructions are converted to radio frequency that's sent to the car to instruct it to perform various speed and turning duties. Apparently, yes, the car will be mind-controlled. Somehow. If this were intended for real-world use, it would go far beyond the autonomous-driving programs that have been in the works for the past couple of years. Nissan has been real active in that area, with chief Carlos Ghosn saying earlier this year that a "hands-free" car for heavy stop-and-go traffic may be available within the next couple of years. And last year, Google unveiled its autonomous car prototype (though it wasn't nearly as cool-looking as the Bimmer i3) while Tesla Motors has been making noise in that area as well. Besides the i3, MoneySuperMarket has developed the Epic Mind Drive mobile game that uses face-tracking technology to control a car on the screen. The idea with these two whiz-bang ideas is to get drivers to realize that they should think as they drive, it seems. As for the telepathic i3, we're as interested in details as the next website, so we checked out the two videos that are supposed to hype the project. While there is some groovy jazzy-electro music involved, the details of how this works are pretty much nonexistent (16 sensors, think to turn the wheel, and that's about it), so we look forward to hearing more about the project once it's underway. You can check out the videos above and below. News Source: Daily Mail, MoneySuperMarket Green BMW mind control